For 24 months (January 2017 to January 2019) Republicans controlled the U.S. government: Donald Trump as President, Rep. Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, and Sen. Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. For 24 long months, the Republicans with their unitary control repeatedly failed to pass any law to “build that wall” (which Trump claimed that he would make Mexico pay for, let us remember). Even after the Democrats offered the ultimate compromise, that is, $25 billion for the wall in exchange for citizenship for the 800,000 DACA “dreamers,” the Republican Congress and president did nothing. Having reneged on his principal campaign promise, and having alienated his own party’s congressional leadership during these two tempestuous years, Trump now seeks to blame the Democrats for his own failings.

President Donald Trump(Photo11: Evan Vucci, AP)

These are the facts, folks. For two full years with total control of the U.S. government, the Republicans did nothing. Nothing. The current crisis is not simply a Trump shutdown; it is the Republican shutdown. Most importantly, it is a wake-up call for America.

Now that the Democratic Party has regained its majority in the House of Representatives following the 2018 midterm elections, when a majority of voters rejected the worst of Trumpism, especially in the suburbs, and, notably, with Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election potentially threatening Trump’s presidency, “The Donald” himself has forced the current partial shutdown of the federal government, largely out of pique. Trump, however, will be remembered forever as the most incompetent Republican president since Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), and likely as the most venal and destructive American president ever.

Trump claims to be a consummate deal-maker. What he has proven to be, however, is a consummate deal-breaker. He broke the Paris Climate Accord, even as the existential crisis of world-wide climate change quickens under his watch. He broke the Pacific Trade Partnership, even as his tariff-war with China threatens the global economy, and China’s ambitious “One Belt, One Road” programme threatens U.S. hegemony in Asia. He broke NAFTA. He even tried to break NATO. He seems to support breaking the European Union. During his presidency, Trump has become an inspiration for leaders throughout the world, from Europe (Hungary, Poland) to Asia (Philippines) to South America (Brazil), who seek to break rule-of-law democracies in favor of “illiberal democracy."

Stateside, Trump clearly broke the law with his cynical scam called Trump University and paid a $25 million civil fine for its shady and exploitive business practices. And he may well have broken campaign finance laws with his illicit hush-money payments to porn stars such as Stormy Daniels in the heat of the presidential campaign, for which his own personal lawyer has pleaded guilty in federal court. The Trump Organization, his mafia-like main business, is notorious for stiffing contractors and breaking basic contract law. Meanwhile, his various golf-course resort properties hire undocumented immigrants, skirting federal employment law. His privately owned Trump hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., that cash-cow based on bilking foreign dignitaries traveling to D.C. on government business, likely breaks the emoluments clause in the Constitution (Article I, Sec.9). And the reportedly $500 million that he owes Russian oligarchs, Putin’s ill-gained puppets, who rescued The Donald from yet another bankruptcy in the 1990s-2000s likely broke U.S. money-laundering laws. No wonder Trump steadfastly refuses to release his tax returns!

With Trump’s current attempt to bully the Democrats into financing what the Republicans refused to do for 24 months, his (partial) shutdown of the government, he has now broken faith with the American people.

In fact, Trump can now claim what no other president has ever achieved, forcing the longest shutdown of the federal government in U.S. history. Next month some 40 million of the poorest and most desperate Americans, those who depend on SNAP benefits or food stamps to stave off hunger, may see their families go even hungrier when funding runs out. In the most food-insecure states like Mississippi, the very heart of Trumplandia, real people will see the consequence of the Republican shutdown in real life. They will have only their president and his party to blame.

One can only hope that on their way home from the food pantry, from the faith-based soup kitchen, from the pawn-shop, or, true to Trump’s business legacy, from the payday-lender or even the old-fashioned loan-shark, these hard-working, tax-paying citizens, who tend to be clustered in the hard-scrabble rural regions and bypassed small towns of the American heartland, many of whom naively placed their faith in Trump as president and in the Republican party more generally, will take a moment and stop by their local county and city clerk’s office and REGISTER TO VOTE. One can only hope.

The Republican shutdown, the latest and greatest proof of Trump’s incompetence and nihilism, is a wake-up call for the country. As we are all learning, the ends, in fact, do not justify the means. The 2020 election cannot come soon enough.